Long time Edmonton Sun Senior Columnist Lorne Gunter says that when it comes to evaluating the performance of Rachel Notley's NDP government in Alberta, you have to consider their actions (or lack thereof) rather than all their words.

Drew said, “The NDP finally realized you would then need pipe to move the refined product.”

Yes, but the NDP still have no figured out that refineries create multiple products from the crude oil, so they would either have to have several pipelines one for each product of ship the much more volatile refined products by train or truck. Intelligence certainly is not the strong suit of the NDP.

Notley is playing the game and waiting her time out. She’s moving on to the federal NDP leadership. By the middle of 2017, she will be campaigning for the federal leadership, with no plans to seek reelection in Alberta. The comedy in all this is that, compared to Avi Lewis, who is most definitely seeking the leadership of the federal NDP, Notley comes across as reasonable and sensible. In fact, her (fake) repudiation of LEAP just proves that she has begun her promotion campaign in advance of the leadership convention. And the sage, Stephen Lewis, even went so far as to say that he was “taken aback” by Notley’s “gratuitous” rejection of LEAP. If Stephen Lewis is lead to a near-freak-out over something he supports, you know that Notley is presenting herself as the voice of reason.